Background and objective of the study
HIV/AIDS is a disease of human immune system caused by HIV Virus. During the initial infection a person may experience a brief period of influenza like illness. This is typically followed by prolonged period without symptoms as illness progress it interfere more and more with the immune system.HIV is transmitted primarily via unprotected sexual intercourse, (including anal and even oral sex) contaminated blood transfusion, hypodermic needles and from mother to child during pregnancy, delivery or breast feeding. Some body fluids such as saliva and tears do not transmit HIV. Prevention of HIV infection primarily through safe sex and needle exchange programmes is a key strategy to control the spread of the disease1.
Objective of the study
1. To assess mean pre test and post test knowledge score of pre-university college students on
HIV/AIDS
2. To determine the effectiveness of STP on prevention and control of HIV/AIDS
3. To find out the association between the pre- test mean knowledge score and selected
demographic variables
Hypothesis
(All hypotheses will be tested at 0.05 level of significance)
H1: The mean post-test knowledge score of adolescents will be significantly higher than their mean pre- test knowledge score regarding prevention of HIV/AIDS.
H2: There will be a significant association between the mean pre- test knowledge score regarding prevention of HIV/AIDS among adolescents with their selected demographic variables
Methods
One group pre-test post test design was for this study. The sample consisted of 100 of adolescents who are studying in the selected P U College at Mangalore. Sample was selected by stratified random technique. Structured knowledge questionnaire was used to collect the data from samples. The collected data was analyzed by using descriptive and inferential statistics.
Results
The mean pre-test knowledge score is 7.57 and mean post test knowledge 19.62. Paired ‘t’ test was done to find out the difference in mean knowledge score. Obtained ‘t’ value was highly significant at 0.05 level of significance indicating that adolescents have improvement in their post-test knowledge while comparing with the pre-test knowledge. There was no significant association between mean knowledge score and selected demographic variables such as sex, age, type of family, income per month, place of residence, source of information, stream of education.
Interpretation and Conclusion
The finding of this study showed that there is a significant difference in the pre-test and post-test score of the adolescents. Adolescents are having more knowledge in the post-test comparing to the pre-test. In general adolescents have lack of knowledge regarding the prevention of HIV/AIDS. There is a need to educate adolescents regarding HIV/AIDS in order to prevent the occurrence of HIV/AIDS in the society.
